alt Hacker NewsBy "marketing" do you mean "experience"? Because absolutely no one is marketing apps as being superior, but instead this is just the experience of users.
There's a weird conspiratorial thing that people do about this whole topic that is so easily debunked. For instance "Apple wanted apps more than PWAs!". Android powers about 73% of the world's smartphones, yet PWAs are irrelevant on the platform.
Web apps can be incredibly powerful, but there's just a massively lower bar in the web app domain, historically. Like people are used to the website being dogshit, a mishmash of broken functionality, terrible layout quirks, slow responsiveness, and so on. Because that is generally acceptable to the web community, where it is deadly to an app.
Like I think it's hilariously ironic that the website telling us that the app could have been a website is currently completely broken, unable to handle a relatively tiny amount of traffic.
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> Because absolutely no one is marketing apps as being superior, but instead this is just the experience of users.
I guess you haven't used the mobile web? Practically any website you use covers half the page with a banner saying don't use the website, the app is SOOO much better.
Yes, "marketing". Ability to market your business, not marketing the concept of an app.
Businesses have an app developed because they feel the market demands it. Their marketing departments feel they have to be able to tell prospective customers "we have an app!" and if they can't, they feel they'll be seen as inferior, not with the times, thereby losing customers.
I totally agree with the article that apps shouldn't be the automatic first choice, but that's the way it is. We've reached the stage where it's seen by users as the default. App icons on the homescreen can be seen, for many, as the modern alternative to bookmarks in the browser. And regarding "sharing a slick URL isn't always easy", perhaps the App Store is, for many users, the modern alternative to Google Search?